Left
by thir13enth
Summary: He had seen those eyes before. She was the one that helped that devil. Yamato/Anko
1. Chapter 1

**Well then, back into Naruto once again! Writing fanfiction for this anime never gets old. Kishimoto has truly created a complete universe. **

**Thank Pokekid 25 for inspiring me to actually start posting this story up! This one had been rotting in the reservoir for quite a while (one…two years?) and I haven't actually gotten around to actually writing it until the request popped by! So thank you so much Pokekid 25 for making me get onto the computer with a blank Word document to start writing! **

**Cheers, kid (no pun intended), I now dedicate this story to you!**

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><p>Yamato had never pegged Kakashi as the type to go out and drink—mostly because Kakashi was infamous for his unforgiving mask. So he was very surprised when the older man tapped him on the shoulder one spring morning.<p>

"Have a drink with us tonight, Tenzou."

"Who's 'us'?"

"You know, the other jounin. Think of it as a rite of welcoming. I know you're ANBU and not like the rest of us, but hell, you've trained Sakura, Naruto, and Sai for quite some time."

Yamato seemed to ignore the reasoning. "Is this something you guys always do?"

"Usually," and Kakashi turned his head to the side, "But I only go occasionally."

Yamato wasn't the type to drink—ok, no, that as a lie—he had been trying to lay of alcohol for a while; there was a period in his life where he drank alcohol like water, if not more.

"I'll pass."

"I'm pretty sure you don't have anything important to attend to."

"No, I'm good."

"I'll pay for the drinks?" Kakashi offered, knowing Yamato's frugality. "Consider it payback for your treat at Ichiraku that time back."

But a social event wasn't going to bring him back to his old drinking habits, was it? It was just people and drinks; it wasn't just drinks and the clock staring back at him alone in his apartment. It should be fine, right?

"Alright, I'll go," Yamato confirmed, and Kakashi nodded.

"Meet me in front of the dango shop around 9," the silver haired jounin added before stepping away.

"Sure, 10 it is then," Yamato agreed, in reference to Hatake's dilatory habits, and Kakashi threw him a middle finger from behind his back.

**encoder**

_His body had to be here somewhere._

_Yamato was pretty sure he was only partly unconscious, maybe half drunk, but he felt like he was completely wide awake, because he only saw everything so vividly, his vision switching back and forth from past to present, from memory to reality._

_His body had to be here somewhere._

_Yamato looked down at the black water, which was now up to his waist, looked at his wet hands with starlight glinting off the drops of sweat on the palms of his hands, looked out at the horizon where the night sky fused with the rough ripples of the dark ocean, interrupted by a silhouette of an island in the distance._

_That was the island._

_The island of timeless hours, endless nights, unforgiving screams, relentless torture…_

_His body had to be here somewhere._

_Yamato pawed through the salty water, as if his struggling would actually get him anywhere. Again and again he broke surface to breathe before diving again into the water that just got denser each time he dipped his head below._

_He was looking for a body, and he thought he spotted it: a pale and rotted hand reaching out._

Save me_, said the corpse._

_So Yamato stretched out his arm to rescue the dead body. His hand gripped the wrist, but both it and the rest of the arm it was attached to disappeared into a watery grave._

_The realization only hit Yamato when he strained his eyes to see the last of the dissolving features of the corpse, a wisp of jet black hair, a plastered smile on thin lips, a stare of steel gray eyes lingering on Yamato's gaze..._

_The body wasn't here._

_It wasn't even real._

**darkerthanblack**

Of course with Kakashi, they arrived the scene later than all the other jounin, most of whom already had a few drinks.

"Kakashi!" Asuma greeted, the first to notice Kakashi stepping into the private tavern room that the jounin had rented out for the night and subsequent morning.

The rest of the jounin swiveled heads to nod or wave at the fashionably late jounin and Kakashi pulled his arm back to gesture towards Yamato.

"Fresh blood," Kakashi briefly explained before the two were welcomed in, the Hatake moving aside to make room for the two. "I think you guys all know Yamato by now. I thought it was good time to call him into our gatherings."

Yamato sat between Kakashi and Kurenai, facing Asuma, and looked around the long rectangular table to take a look at the rest of the members. A few faces he recognized and others that he didn't.

"Here," Kurenai slid two small glasses in their direction, and Asuma fetched a bottle from behind, placing it on the wooden table quite audibly.

"You do drink, don't you?" Asuma asked with a smile as he poured Kakashi and Yamato the first drink. "Most ANBU I know don't give themselves the pleasure."

That forced a laugh out of Yamato. "Oh yeah, of course," Yamato chuckled, a bit nervously, in anticipation of the drink.

"That's not true," Genma cynically retorted, the senbon in his mouth jumping. "Drunk is the only way the ANBU could have failed the last espionage mission into Sound."

A few deep laughs and feminine giggles, and even Yamato cracked a genuine smile to the sardonic comment. Yamato looked down at his glass of shochu, clear as the glass that held it, the sour acrid fragrance of the drink tickling his nose.

He wasn't sure whether to actually drink it, or just play along with the game and raise the glass to his lips to take pretend gulps.

It had been a few years since Yamato had alcohol in his cup. It was strange to be holding any drink besides water but in a few minutes of inhaling the intoxicating and seductive aroma, the alcohol grew more and more familiar in his hands.

**listenmyson**

_Gasping for air, Yamato knocked himself out of his delusions and swam, thrashing back onto shore, inhaling and exhaling deeply to return the oxygen to his body, having lost his breath under fear and under surprise underwater._

"_God," he whispered to himself and pulled himself together upon getting up and starting to walk back home. He almost forgot where he was, thinking he was lost, but when seeing the light of his apartment complex, still shining bright, from the distance, he followed it like a famished man would chase the smell of beef._

_Not expecting his door to be unlocked, he pushed a bit too hard on the door handle and collapsed into his home, falling with the weight of his wet pants and soaked shirt, trails of water pooling onto his wooden floor. A grunt, and then he rose from his fall and closed the door shut before returning to his table, where an empty bottle lay on its side, its cap thrown somewhere else on the floor._

_Being thirsty, the first thing he did was to fetch another long slim bottle in his hands, curse it open and meet drink to mouth before stepping into black oblivion once again._

**firstbornlastone**

"Huh," Asuma suddenly remarked, bringing Yamato back to his senses, and the other conversing jounin back to focus on Yamato. "Well if this ANBU isn't drinking, then maybe the ANBU really _aren't _too efficient as a task force out there." A few laughs followed.

Before Yamato could sound a 'what', Hayate stated, "It's been ten minutes and you haven't even taken a sip yet."

The chuckling diminished by now, and the silence indicated to Yamato that he should either drink or pass, since the other jounin were waiting on Yamato's actions.

Yamato took a quick look at Kakashi's glass, but as Yamato had predicted earlier, Kakashi was actually not a drinker, and was swirling the shochu around in his still full cup instead.

To drink or not to drink? And Yamato pondered a moment.

Well it was just a social event that happened to have drinks. Drinking now wasn't going to pull him back into—

He took a sip. Slowly, like he would wine, its nutty earth flavor running gently over his tongue.

Pronounced cheers erupted across the table. "Ehhhh! The ANBU _do _drink! The ANBU's ability as a task force is re-legitimized!" Gai exclaimed.

"Tsch, that's nothing," scoffed a musical voice all the way down the table to Yamato's right.

"Calm down, Anko, it would take him a few bottles just to reach your _sober _levels," Kurenai joked.

Yamato snapped his head over to the female that was brought into the conversation.

The purple-haired kunoichi stuck her tongue out at Kurenai. "I don't drink that much, Lipstick."

"Right," Kakashi blurted. "Just half of our drink funds."

"Shut it, Ojii-san," she shot back. "I drink for your lack."

"Fiesty as ever," Genma muttered to Yamato, from across the table. "Only gets worse per drink."

Said kunoichi's head shot up. "Who was talking about me?" her shrill voice snarled.

"Even _she_ doesn't deny it," Kakashi sighed under his breath.

She whipped her head around to face the other direction, on Yamato's side of the table and scanned each of the jounin's eyes to search for the guilty insult written on their face.

He met brown eyes after Kurenai was deemed innocent.

He froze like the memories that were locked in his mind. That shade of brown was much too familiar for him to let her eyes go.

Was she—

Anko scowled, and having found the guilty one, returned to her drink, chugging the rest of her glass down. "We'll settle this later in private, Genma."

"My bed or yours, Anko?" Genma mocked.

"You know what I mean," she clarified, irritated.

"Oof, the shower is even _hotter_."

The room filled with laughter and while the rest of the jounin awaited Anko's retort, Yamato retreated to figuring out if that was the same brown that he saw those years ago.

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><p><strong>The story has't quite started yet but... :3 review?<strong>

**thir13enth**


	2. Chapter 2

**Just for this story's sake, Tenzou is Yamato's actual name, even though we know that Kakashi only calls Yamato that out of habit because Tenzou was one of Yamato's previous codenames.**

**I also think, as a quick heads up, I should probably mention that the majority of the writing is going to be tilted. :P So watch your heads.**

**Thank you guys for the reviews and the support!**

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><p>"<em>Damn, I don't want to wash the dishes today," Akira groaned as they collected all the plates and bowls from the table, transporting them to the kitchen sink.<em>

"_Me either," Tenzou agreed._

_After all the used utensils were also thrown in together with the dirty dishes, Akira and Tenzou looked at each other, expressing mutual disgust at the piles of what they had to clean. It was their turn to clean the silverware this night, and normally, both wouldn't minded if there were a couple of pans and bowls and such._

_But to wash the entire days' worth of the_ entire _orphanage's dishes made them really want to belong to a regular nuclear family. It was those days that Tenzou wanted to have parents and a real blood family to go home to._

"_I've got a plan," Akira suddenly said, turning toward Tenzou, his disheveled jet black hair and steel gray eyes sparkling mischief._

_It was those moments that Tenzou realized that maybe living in this government instituted state home wasn't so bad after all. As long as Tenzou's best buddy, Akira, was there, life wasn't too miserable at all._

"_What's up," Tenzou asked, having always participated in Akira's tricks._

_Akira produced a scroll out from his back pocket, a wide smile across his thin lips. "Look!"_

_Tenzou's eyebrow raised. "What is that?"_

_Seeming unable to control his excitement, Akira quickly explained, "One of the older kids gave me this scroll and said that if I activated it, the dishes would wash _and _dry themselves!"_

_Akira's anticipation was contagious, and Tenzou encouraged Akira right along, saying, "Let's do it! Let's do it!"_

_The scroll was unfurled, and Tenzou feasted his eyes on the elaborate writing of the paper, the center character reading 'clean' in kanji. The two of them observed in awe of the scroll's contents for a moment, before Akira quickly got back up and put his hands together._

"_Tora, Mi, Inu, Tatsu, Uma, Saru!" Akira performed the hand seals and then finally pushed down on the center character._

_The characters all glowed a bright blue for two seconds and then—_

"_Oh my god!" Tenzou pointed at all the dishes that were _levitating _on their own accord!_

_Akira nearly knocked himself into the stove watching the sponges follow the dishes' lead._

_Both of them started to laugh in amazement, and then turned toward each other and clapped their hands together in a high-five. Tenzou quickly closed the door of the kitchen and Akira joined him by the door as the two of them watched the soap, dishes, and sponges dance around in the air._

"_This really works! It really works!" Akira exclaimed, pointing over at a sponge that was voraciously scrubbing one of the plates to the right._

"_Look, look!" Tenzou also added, pointing at the large steel soup pots. "Even the cooking pots!"_

"_This is so awesome!"_

"_How cool!"_

"_I can't believe it actually works!"_

"_Are there more of these?"_

"_Look how quickly everything is being done!"_

"_Aw man! We should have found out about this scroll a long time ago!"_

_And then after three minutes of excitement, all the dishes had been scrubbed and now just needed to be rinsed._

"_You said, they'd dry themselves too, right?" Tenzou asked to confirm, after seeing the soapy dishes hover for a while._

"_Yeah, I guess it—"_

_And then everything went terribly wrong._

_All the dishes started to rotate. Very quickly._

_So quickly that the dirty soap and leftover food bits began to fly off them._

"_Woah, wait! They never told me the dishes dried off like _that_!" Akira suddenly exclaimed in fright. He scurried over to the scroll, but the characters on the paper was gone and the dishes continued to all spin at high speeds to vortex the crap off their clean surfaces._

"_Shit, shit, shit, shit!" they cursed, unable to do anything._

"_What are we going to do now?" Akira asked, his eyes wide with fright._

"_Did the older kids say that the dishes would stack into the cabinet by themselves?" Tenzou asked. "Because if not, the plates might just fall to the ground!"_

"_Oh god! Screw the older kids!" Akira shrieked._

_And then after a minute of terror, all the dishes had been dried and now were assembling themselves into the cabinet._

_Tenzou sighed in relief that the plates hadn't just dropped and fallen to the floor—that would have been quite an evil prank—but looked around at all the walls of the kitchen, where soap and food bits had been transferred onto and were now dripping down to the floor._

"_Aw man…I think we ended up with more work than if we had just cleaned the dishes," Akira stated._

"_Damn," Tenzou agreed._

_They got some rags and started to wipe the walls, all the meantime, thinking of pranks to play back on the older kids._

"_We should steal all their laundry."_

"_Reverse the vacuum."_

"_Superglue all their toilet seats."_

"_Spice their chocolates."_

"_Turn off the hot wat—"_

"_AKIRA?" the two of them heard from beyond the kitchen door and down the hallway._

"_Was that Obaa-chan?" Akira asked, leaping up in panic, wet rag in his hand._

"_I think so," Yamato replied. "Think she found the lizard?"_

"_Oh god, we're going to get caught," Akira apprehended. "She's going to come looking for me and she knows we have kitchen duties today."_

_The two of them began to dread the impending footsteps that sounded louder and louder, getting closer and closer to the kitchen…_

"_I got this," Yamato told Akira, and putting down his rag, he stepped away from the walls and placed his hands together to concentrate._

_The door swung open to an angry Obaa-chan, who was swinging around a broom._

"_AKIRA! WHAT DID I TELL YOU ABOUT BRINGING PESTS INTO THE HOUSE?"_

"_I'M SORRY OBAA-CHAN!" Akira bowed his head down in sincere apology and fear. He looked over at Tenzou, knowing that in any second now, Obaa-chan would notice that the walls of the kitchen were a complete mess._

"_Geez!" Obaa-chan scoffed, crossing her arms over her white apron. "There's already enough cleaning to do around here without the trouble! And you _know _some of the girls are scared of lizards!" She suddenly looked to the side at one of the walls opposite them._

_Akira braced—_

"_Well then, carry on with the dishes," she added before leaving._

_A second passed before they snickered silently._

"_Dude! What did you do?" Akira exclaimed._

"_Something that actually worked," Tenzou replied wryly._

"_You guys used _genjutsu_, didn't you?"_

_The two boys looked up, seeing another girl of their age walking into the kitchen with an all-knowing smile on her face, midnight blue strands of straight long hair framing her face and emerald eyes sparkling with interest._

"_A-Aoko," Akira greeted, suddenly standing straight and composing himself._

_Aoko looked around the kitchen, and not being a victim of genjutsu as Obaa-chan was, she saw the kitchen in its true form. She clucked her tongue. "Well then," she said, turning back around and going down the hallway._

"_Wait!" and Akira ran forward to grab her wrist to stop Aoko, spinning her back around. "You're not going to tell Obaa-chan, are you?"_

_She forced her hand out of his tight grasp, rubbing her wrist with the other free hand. "Of course I'm not," she said, slightly offended. "I'm going to go get a hair tie and then come to help you hopeless idiots out."_

**sekibetsu**

Yamato spotted the purple-haired kunoichi from the other night at the drinking party with the other jounin. She was walking down the street in the opposite direction of Yamato alongside Kurenai, and the two females looked like they were exchanging some gossip, laughing and leaning in to hear each other's words.

He shifted his eyes to the ground slightly to the left of him, hoping to avoid any eye contact with either of the two and went merrily along his way.

He didn't really notice anything, too focused on trying to stay out of their attention, and—

"SAYONARA!" the feisty voice yelled, a bit too close to his ear for comfort.

Wha—

She bumped into him, not looking at where she was going herself, since she was waving a goodbye to Kurenai. He caught his balance and swung to the side, and she caught her own.

"Sorry," he mumbled and stepped to pivot, but she hadn't seemed to hear him.

"I'm sorry!" she returned an audible apology, sheepishly. "I didn't see you there."

She looked like she was about to strike up a conversation, but noticed that Yamato didn't seem to be in the mood to talk and was half way out of their encounter and let the chance for conversation go, turning to go in her own direction to wherever she had to be.

**itisfiveinthemorning**

_Someone else was in that room._

_Tenzou's eyes opened and not moving his head, quickly scanned the room, and confirmed his prediction when he saw a lanky silhouette whipping around the large room, where Tenzou and at least fifteen other boys of his age slept peacefully on their tatami mats._

_He didn't recognize the figure. It was too tall to be anyone that he knew, and it was most certainly not Obaa-chan since she didn't move _that _quickly._

_Was it one of the older kids coming to play a prank on them?_

_Tenzou instantly got up, his torso off the floor, but a hasty whisper came up from behind his head._

"_No, no, go back to sleep, boy. Things are going to be alright."_

_He was about to protest, but felt a hand clasp over his mouth and then suddenly, he was out._

_Between bouts of consciousness, he knew something very bad was happening, seeing the rest of his orphan family around him slowly disappearing and being taken away, but he was unable to process the negative feelings completely and he couldn't move at all._

_It was his turn, he knew, and shivered when cold arms picked him up and lay him next to another half-awake person, the warm body of one of Tenzou's other orphanage brothers._

_They were on some wooden cart, and Tenzou knew it had wheels because of the way it rocked as more and more sleeping bodies were loaded, another warm body placed against his back._

_And then finally, Tenzou saw a cover slid down over all of them, taking a last glance at the starry sky that he wouldn't see for a long while after that._

"_Take them over to the boat, Anko."_

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><p><strong>:3 Well, whaddaya think?<strong>

**thir13enth**


	3. Chapter 3

**Hey wow, thanks for the reviews-I definitely don't expect this many for a rather uncommon type of story/pairing lol.** **So thank you for all that support that you guys have been giving me!**

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><p>"Tenzou," Kakashi had said. "Take the team out for another practice session?"<p>

So Yamato woke up on time to do that, shaking remnants of a haunting dream out of his mind while pulling a shirt on, rolling the long sleeves of it down his arms, feeling the fabric stretch over his smooth skin.

He headed over to the meeting spot where Kakashi had said the team would be waiting, and sure enough, there they were, bright eyed and bushy tailed, except for Naruto, who was busy arguing with a rather familiar figure.

Yamato moved his eyes to the ground, almost in frustration.

He hadn't ever seen the womanas frequently as he did _after _seeing her drinking with the other jounin.

Why did she choose to be so ubiquitous now?

**cookiecrumbs**

"_You're probably not even a month older than us!" Akira protested as some violet-haired girl turned the lock on their jail cell. "What's going on? Why can't you tell us?"_

_The girl looked back at them—all of them—the five of whom were in the cell including Yamato—with concerned eyes. She bit her lip and looked to the side, as though she was checking her back to see if someone else was watching her._

"_I-I can't tell you," she admitted to them, in a timid voice._

"_This is ridiculous! Why are we locked up and you're just strutting around like nothing is happening?" Akira suddenly got up and made his way towards the bar._

_The girl stepped back, away from their jail cell, looking genuinely terrified._

"_I don't know!" she said, her eyes glazing over, and her hands clasping together over her upper body as though she was truly truly frightened. She fingered a triangular pendant that was around her neck nervously._

_Tenzou wanted to tell Akira to leave her alone, but he couldn't disagree with the anger burning behind his best friend's silver eyes._

"_You just said that you couldn't tell us!" and now Akira had his hands wrapped around some of the metal bars and were shaking them, the large padlock at the end rattling._

_The girl backed up so far that her back hit the wall, and in surprise, she dropped the key to the lock on their jail cell, which slid close to where Akira was standing._

_Akira quickly reached his hand out of the bars to reach out for the key, but retracted his hand when a pair of boots stomped over the key._

_It was that lanky figure from the night before!_

_Tenzou took in the long straight black hair, pale skin, and tan full body cloak that the man wore, a dark purple cord tied around his lean waist._

"_Avoid talking to them, and next time, if they cause any trouble, just call me, and I'll take care of it," a bone-chilling sly voice said, animalistic yellow eyes turning back to look at Akira, who immediately crouched back from his position at the very front of the cell._

_Even Akira was intimidated._

"_Come," said the man, and he stretched out his right hand towards the girl. "We have other things to do."_

_The girl looked over at Akira once before stepping towards the imposing man._

_She took another glance back at the rest of them, and the last Tenzou saw of her were her light brown eyes._

"_Don't worry about them, Anko. They're orphans. They don't have families to go back to. No one is going to miss them."_

**knockingatdeathsdoor**

"Oh, hi," she said, giving him a bright smile.

He stepped aside to let her pass, but she didn't take a leave, instead, stopping to talk to him.

For the first time since the night he first saw them, he now saw her latte-colored eyes again, but this time in its full brew.

His tongue tasted slightly bitter.

"Good morning," he said stiffly, taking his eyes off of her, before realizing that what he was doing wasn't proper etiquette and that he was rather taking things personally.

"Yamato, right?"

He nodded.

She stuck out a hand. "I'm sorry I never properly introduced myself to you. I'm Anko Mitarashi."

He scanned her briefly. Purple, medium length hair tied up in a messy ponytail, well fitted mesh shirt and dark orange skirt, and a high collared tan trench coat to add the extra layer.

A triangular fang—was it a snake's?—around her neck, bound by a thick black cord.

"Nice to meet you," he rehearsed, shaking her hand for a brief second before taking his hand back into his crossed arms.

After a brief moment of no conversation, she gave him a short wave before going off on her own way. "Well then, nice meeting you as well, I'll see you around."

He returned the farewell and watched her go.

As if there couldn't have been any more of a coincidence, he could have sworn he saw the Cursed Seal of Heaven at the base of her neck near the collarbone, the three tomoe slipping into view with the twist of her coat.

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><p><strong>Meh, short chapter...but I have long days so forgive me!<strong>

**(Though some comments would be nice!)**

**thir13enth**


	4. Chapter 4

**Thanks all again for the reviews! Sorry about that relatively short chapter...-_-**

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><p>"<em>Hey…" a soft voice stirred Tenzou awake.<em>

_He pulled his head up, wondering what time it was. Then the bleak darkness and echoing sounds brought him back to reality—where he had no idea where he was. He was in a jail cell, among his friends._

_Something was happening._

_He felt like they had been here for eons already._

_He didn't understand it. He didn't know what was going on. But for some reason, he felt as though the reason why they were captured and taken here was a very large and convoluted reason, something that he wasn't sure he'd be able to figure out until he got much older._

_That is, if he _had _the time to get any older before dying._

_Tenzou's head turned to the voice that was calling out, the one that had awoken him. A few other heads around him stirred, also having heard the melodic voice._

_It was that girl. The one with the light brown eyes and purple hair._

"_Hey," she said, a bit more urgently this time, still in a soft hushed whisper. She caught Tenzou in the eye and, seeing that at least one person had heard her and responded, she pulled out a small something wrapped in brown paper from behind her back. Sticking her hands through the bars from the outside, she passed the package towards his general direction._

_He was sitting a bit farther from the bars of the cell, so he couldn't reach out to obtain it, and he was too tired to get up at the moment. So he looked at the package instead, examining it from the distance he was at, against the dank light and putridly human smells. His eyes travelled back to the girl's face and they met again for another few seconds, her eyes still carrying complete and utter resolve._

_He looked back at her eyes with calm indifference, and her determination seemed to break. She looked behind her quickly, in case perhaps someone was behind her._

"_What do you want, bitch," Akira quickly murmured, harsh and demanding._

_Her hand changed directions, holding out the package in Akira's direction instead._

"_I-I saved some," she stuttered, intimidated, and then lay the package down on the ground._

_Akira got up and swiped it off the ground, placing the package to his nose, as she humbled herself, looking down at the ground in front of her. He snarled in disgust. "It's probably full of poison. Just so you can get rid of us, huh?" He waited for a response, and Tenzou watched the girl's face cringe._

"_Well?" Akira demanded. _

_Even as the one in capture, he was still the more dominant figure over the girl._

"_No," she said, quietly, eyebrows furrowed and fists clenched. "It's off my own plate."_

_Akira growled. "Lies," he muttered, but he didn't kick away the food or anything, instead keeping it close at his side to share with the others for later. "Don't give me that bullshit." _

_And then he spat at her._

_She, in pure shame, wiped the spit off her cheek with her right arm sleeve._

"_Akira," Tenzou said. He knew they all had more than enough against the girl for having helped her master get them into this cell. She was the one that carried the key to their imprisonment, and to their escape, and she didn't help them. The girl was exactly like them—what made her so special to be free from the cell?_

_But Tenzou could tell that maybe this was going a bit too far. The girl seemed honest enough—maybe she felt guilty for them?_

_Maybe it was worse off for her—she was forced to watch over others exactly like her._

_Every morning she probably woke up believing that she should have been on the other side of the bars alongside them, and every night she probably fell asleep dreaming that she could get out of all the guilt within her._

**listentoyourheart**

Yamato woke up, famished. He had made the mistake of forgetting dinner the previous day.

_Shit_, he cursed, as he pulled himself up, feeling the cramps of hunger in his abdomen. He had to go get something to eat.

Stumbling into his kitchen, he opened the refrigerator door and realized that it was empty except for a jar of mustard and a tomato.

He took the tomato and ate it, while pulling on a better shirt and pants to go out to get crap to eat.

Before he reached his door however, he spotted a sheet of paper at the door, and picked it up off his floor, leaning against the wall to read it.

Apparently the Hokage was having that appreciation day celebration thing again.

He went every year—mostly for the free food, and because the other jounin insisted that he went.

And there was never really a problem with him going.

Except that this time, things were just a bit different.

He'd enjoy his own food in his own solitude. He was never fond of social and gregarious events anyway.

But while he put that rationalization through his head, he knew that he was just blabbering nonsense to himself, and that in reality, Anko's presence was the main factor.

**requiemforadream**

_The food that the girl had offered them hadn't done anything to them at all but to dissolve the hunger that had been festering in them._

_Tenzou hadn't asked Akira why Akira had snapped at the girl when she didn't have any intention at all of hurting them. He knew Akira knew, but that Akira was just enraged at the helpless position that they were all in._

_If only one of them had made a mess of the bedroom and Obaa-chan didn't let any of them sleep until they cleaned up. If only one of them was awake and told Obaa-chan. If only…_

_All their heads turned to the upcoming sound, some scratching and some footsteps._

_The tension in the air disappeared when a dog scuffled by their jail cell, sniffing the ground frantically._

_It was on a leash._

_That girl was holding the other end of the leash._

_They watched her as she quickly gave the dog a pet, probably nervous under the stare of the boys in the cell (but hell, what else did they have to look at?) and swiftly unlooked the leash from the dog's collar._

_Akira suddenly muttered, though quite loudly, "You'd release a _dog _but not someone of your own kind?"_

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><p><strong>Just another quick update...<strong>

**thir13enth**


	5. Chapter 5

**Now playing: Crush by Pendulum. **

**Tanks so much for the support! (and yes, I left that typo in there)**

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><p>"Nah, man, you have to go," Asuma said, shaking his head at Yamato's shrug of indifference. "I mean, what other events is Konoha ever going to have? We work 364 nights, screw this one!"<p>

Yamato shrugged, again.

"All the ANBU go too! You'll see your buddies without the masks!" Asuma persuaded. "Besides, I could have sworn you went last year."

"Well, maybe just not this year," Yamato replied. "I'm not feeling up for it tonight."

"Why not? You have to see more of the other half of the human population, you know, watch how they act, learn about the female and uncover their mystique!"

Yamato smiled and forced a laugh. "I'm not interested."

Asuma considered for a second and then nodded his head. "Yeah, I see where you're coming from. They're a burden, but at least go be social or something."

The ANBU wrinkled his nose, but Asuma didn't take that as an answer.

"You're going."

"Nah, I really don't—"

"I'll pay your next utility bill."

"I can pay that on my own—"

"Take the bait, Yamato. Electricity and water is costing more than ever."

"I don't use that much—"

"Of course you do," Asuma insisted. "I am bribing you, Yamato. Take the damn bribe. It's win-win for you. You get party and your bills paid and I'll stop talking."

Yamato sighed. "A'ite I'll go."

**everthesame**

He took all precautions to avoid any purple-haired women that he saw over the heads of the others at the gathering, even walking towards the punch bowl in an attempt to look in the other direction when he saw her straight ahead of him.

But he couldn't just walk towards the punch bowl and just stare at it, waiting for her to pass. That would be too weird.

So he obligingly picked up a cup and took a ladle to pour some punch into his cup, knowing very well that it was spiked.

Though it couldn't possibly have _that _much alcohol diluted into it right? Yamato was an ex-heavy drinker; he probably wouldn't even feel anything.

Yamato raised the cup to his lips and took a few gulps. He counted a few seconds away, making sure to count to at least four or five before he would turn around to check for clearance if—

"Hey! Yamato, right?"

He choked on his drink.

"Oh, woah, you okay?" Anko asked as Yamato turned the other way to cough his dry throat out.

_Damn it, _he thought. This was exactly what he was trying to avoid the entire time.

"Yeah," he answered stiffly. And then he gave her a smile. "Anko?" he asked, even though he would never in hell ever get her name wrong.

She nodded, and then looked over at the punch cup he was drinking. "That's like water."

"I guess, to a drinker like you, from what I've heard."

Laughing, she replied, "I don't drink _that _much. They just say I do because I get drunk so easily and so one or two cups will knock me off sense a bit more than other people." She sighed. "And then I try to explain that I have a low tolerance and they just joke back that I'm just in denial."

Yamato nodded. "Hm."

"But it seems you do drink, after all," Anko said. "You don't seem to be holding yourself back like you were last time at the bar."

"Eh, I just…eh."

She smiled. "As they tell me: denial."

Yamato forced a laugh. He had to do that a bit too many times today.

**authorishungry**

_It was him again._

_He, with skin colored pale dead and reeking of murder. They didn't dare to challenge his authority, and even the glares that the children had at first always been giving him finally were all replaced with fear for the obvious superior._

_A needle with a blue label. Definitely not the first of the kind that they had seen, and they all mentally whimpered when seeing the familiar color, knowing what that had down to the companions._

_The man's eyes scanned them all, looking for candidates for his next injective experiment. Those eyes were so peaceful and passive looking but they all knew it hid away the pupils of a madman, the stare of a true and selfish killer. Eyes that were searching for something that could never be sought, and would sacrifice everything for the impossible, forcing others to sacrifice what they didn't want to sacrifice along the way. Cold. Haunting. Demeaning. _

_A finger pointed at the red head that was scrunched up in the back. "You," the man said with a smile. "Come here. Don't be afraid. I won't let anything happen to you."_

_It was a lie. They all knew what happened to the subjects of the experiment._

_The red head whimpered, but gathered the courage to face his end, a glaze forming over his eyes, his fingers tapping a nervous goodbye, hands at his sides while standing. All the others' eyes were over him, sending him prayers and empty hope._

_He was taken away._

_They heard his final screams echoing down the hall._

**helldisturbed**

"So what's your favorite food?" she asked him, her violet hair bouncing to the right where her head tilted a bit towards her shoulder.

Yamato shrugged, placing a small smile on his eyes and lips. "I don't really favor one thing over another."

She accepted his answer and replied, "I love dango." Then she thought about it again and restated, "Actually I love all the sweets that exist." Her eyes scurried over to place the dessert table in her sight. "Let's move over to the desserts," she suggested. The dessert table seemed to be placed just for her convenience, as it didn't seem a lot of others were hanging around the sugars. He escorted her on her walk towards diabetes.

**timeisgoingon**

_Sometimes the man injected more than one of them at once. He would leave them in the same jail cell._

_Those unfortunate souls would faint and knock out onto the cold cement while screaming in agony._

_The others in the jail cell had to make sure to turn them over so that they didn't drown in their own spit._

**andon,forever**

"Not much the talkative person, are you?" she suddenly inquired, a few steps towards the desserts.

"No, not in any way," he forced a chuckle, and she played along with it.

Why the hell was she being so friendly? Why was she acting as though they were friends since birth? Why was she was lighthearted? She was the one, that girl that worked for _him._

**whiteflag**

_And one day, Tenzou was chosen._

_He remembered the others from two days ago. They were clawing at themselves, showing the evil man the bulbous purple and green growths emerging from their skin. They were trying to rip out the tumors that were growing like parasites at their skin, tearing at their own muscle until there was only bone to wince at. The cell stank of iron, was haunted by agony._

_Tenzou rationalized his being selected as a way out of this hell, where he was forced to watch his fellow friends drop dead around him._

_The man held the blue-labeled needle—oh god, that shade of blue—before lifting the cap of the needle point—save him, his life was about to end—and then it all stopped—_

"_Anko," he called over his shoulder, and a small figure peeked out from behind the corner of the cage. "Anko, you had always wanted to help, right?"_

_But her face didn't show this. She was terrified. She didn't want to do what her superior did. She didn't want to see other faces with her same innocent eyes closing and becoming still forever._

_She said nothing though, and came to his side in any case. _

_Tenzou could feel the tension rise in the air. He could hear the mental whispers of hatred for the man's favoritism towards the girl. Why was she treated well? Why did she not help us get out of here? She is the same as the rest of us? Why is she so special? What makes her so different? This wasn't fair!_

"_No, I…I don't want to," she said, in a small voice._

_The snake-eyed man gave her a smile. "Don't be afraid," he cooed, as the man's cold hand suddenly clenched even harder around Tenzou's clenched wrist, pulling him towards the two of them. He placed the needle in Anko's right hand and passed Tenzou's arm to her left hand._

_It was here that he met her frightened light brown eyes._

"_Now just inject like we had practiced with the fake bodies," said his icy voice._

_Tenzou could feel her hand shaking, and the needle point, as it grew closer to his skin—she did hold it ever so expertisely—quivered._

_She shook her head, her mouth twisting into all sorts of repressed emotions. "I don't—"_

"_Just do it. He'll be fine."_

"_No, he won't!" blurted a voice all too familiar to Tenzou._

_Akira!_

_No longer was Tenzou scared of the needle—he was more scared of what would happen to Akira because of his loud mouth._

"_He's not going to be all fine—you're going to kill him!" Akira continued, pointing straight at the purple haired girl. Tenzou felt her almost drop the needle, his arm in her hand, full of cold sweat._

_The man turned around, like a phantom. He kneeled down to Akira's eyes, the reaper-like void-full eyes meeting Akira's eyes. Akira didn't flinch, and he pushed away the others in the prison that were trying to drag him back further into the cage. _

_Tenzou couldn't meet Akira's eyes._

_He didn't want to have either of them see the last of each other in this situation._

"_How do you know? Perhaps you will see for yourself! You will be next after him!" and the man's pale hand, like a snake, whipped out and grabbed at Akira's arm. Tenzou's heart leapt. No! What the hell was Akira thinking! Tenzou was about to rush out and kill the man for even laying a hand on his dear friend, but then the snake-man's head snapped back towards him and Anko, giving her silent instructions to inject him using the blue-labeled needle._

_Tenzou saw the needle grow closer—he couldn't look up at her eyes, he couldn't look to the side at the man's eyes, he couldn't look back toward his friend's eyes, or anyone of the eyes that stared in the prison cell. He could look nowhere else but at his skin, where the needle point began to sink and pinch at his skin. He barely felt the needle point—he could only feel chills rolling down her back._

_And under the man's watchful eyes, the purple-haired girl pressed her thumb lightly down on the needle, and Tenzou's tightened hands started to twitch._

_Burning liquid entered Tenzou's veins. Maybe it was purely psychological, maybe it was actually there. But whatever it was, Tenzou just winced and held his breath for what seemed like the longest time._

"_Hey!" he heard the man yell, and then saw the man's pale arm spilling some blood, and Akira's bloodied teeth at the source._

_Tenzou almost stood, but then remembered there was a needle stuck in his arm. Suddenly, he made eye contact with the purple-haired girl again, and he wasn't sure what he saw in her eyes._

_She took a breath and then pulled the needle out of his skin, spilling the rest of the remaining liquid in the needle at the floor. She did this swiftly—he didn't think anyone saw her, and then quickly put a bandage over the needle prick._

_The next time Tenzou looked at Akira, Akira was face down on the ground, seemingly unconscious, and the man walking towards them. Tenzou didn't have to have seen what the man did to Akira to know—Tenzou could feel the fear of what had happened in the others inside the prison cell. _

_Tenzou didn't think they were going to ever speak up, out, or against that man ever again._

_And then he felt his body dropping, and his legs, he could no longer feel._

_Black enveloped the rest of him._

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><p><strong>Review time for you guys! :D<strong>

**thir13enth**


	6. Chapter 6

**Wow, FanFiction has definitely changed since I was last here. Interesting but I appreciate this new photo thing, though I'm not entirely sure if this change is essentially for the better or the worse...**

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><p><em>His lungs burned alive.<em>

_His head instinctively knocked backwards as he searched for air._

_He rose from the cold water, and then noticed two hands holding his wrist._

_His eyes were still closed, but by the sound of a chilly voice, he knew it was _that _man._

"_He's the only one left and alive," said the man's voice, without any sort of empathy. It enraged Tenzou to hear the voice was not worried, but instead curiosity?_

"_Quite disappointing," the voice continued. "That treatment surely has a low pass rate."_

**allornothing**

Anko chewed a bit before swallowing the dango, having done so slightly thoughtfully.

"Well, I'll be right back. I'm going to have a quick chat with some of my friends over there," she said, and then threw away the dango stick before beginning to step away.

It was now or never. He watched her take a few steps away.

Nah, he dismissed it. He could do it at a later time.

He watched her take a couple more steps.

"Uh, chotto!" he suddenly yelled out, and she pivoted her on her foot, a puzzled expression on her face.

She tilted her head in question of him, and he quickly walked over to confront her directly.

**dividerdivider**

"_Very good," said the man, after seeing wood sprout out of the ground, and after seeing Tenzou curled up in a tired ball at the side._

"_What now?" the purple-haired girl asked._

"_We'll keep him here—see what made him so much more special than the others."_

**thenextnight**

_When he heard the metal jangle of the keys, Tenzou thought they were going to take him out again and experiment on his new found abilities._

_It wasn't like anything else that he had ever experienced. It wasn't a jutsu, it wasn't a fighting style._

_It was like the wood was part of him—and it was in his blood._

_It was limp when he was sad, rigid when he was angry. The wood twisted and turned to his every will, every thought, every feeling. The wood branched out and represented what he felt—even when his face controlled the muscles that hid his emotions._

"_Hey," he heard a small voice call out._

_He looked up, startled to see the silhouette of the purple-haired girl._

_Alone._

_The gate to his individual prison now opened, and then he saw her hand beckon him._

_Adrenaline pumped him through to do this, though his body was sore and aching._

"_What's happening?" he asked, though he clearly knew what was happening by looking at her darting eyes and the dark hallway, his rapid heartbeat and her slow and careful steps._

"_I'm getting you out of here."_

_He made sure it wasn't a dream._

"_And all of your friends."_

"_What—" and he bumped into something metallic, and it clanged hard on the floor._

_Cursing, she pushed him towards darkness—he was surprised she knew where she was going, and then suddenly, he felt a door._

_He pushed and then tasted the crisp air of the outdoors, something that for the past eternity was replaced with air salty of tears._

"_Go!" she interrupted his thoughts, but it was good she did, because there wasn't any time left at all._

"_How do I get out—?"_

"_Just jump into the water—swim as fast as you can!" she exclaimed silently, helping to push him overboard._

_And he fell face down into the black velvet of the warm seawater, salt stinging his eyes. Pulling an arm up for a stroke through the water to get him going, his clothes dragging some weight down on his lanky body, he lifted his head up above the surface of the water, sputtering. _

_He had to get out—don't think about anything, not anything—just get out._

_There wasn't even time to say thank you._

**somechords**

It took him a minute to say it.

"Thank you."

Anko raised an eyebrow. "What for?"

**switchback**

Her face turned playful.

He watched her eyebrows knit in slight confusion.

"For saving me," Yamato finally clarified.

She laughed it off, as though it was supposed to be a joke. "I don't know what you're talking…"

Her voice faded as a small scab slowly peeled wide open again, and out flooded repressed memories.

Her eyes widened and her mouth gaped open. She looked down, and when her light brown eyes rested back on his face, they saw him through a much different sheen.

"That was you?"

"Yes," he said slowly. "Thank you."

She was speechless.

"I…thought you knew," he said.

"No," she said. "I thought you hadn't made it."

**landing**

_He had never swum faster or longer than that night, collapsing in the middle of the waves and waking up again with the blazing sun in his eyes, his clothes and skin caked with the salty mud of the shoreline._

"_Hey, where are you from?" asked the first group of people that noticed him, the small beat-up looking orphan._

_He didn't have to answer though—once they saw that the trees bent over while he walked past, they knew that he was from Konoha._

_And once in Konoha, once they saw that he could move the forest at will and saw him with no family, they placed him into the ANBU._

**tearmyheartopen**

"Thank you," Yamato said. "That's all I wanted to say…in case I didn't see you again or something."

She shook her head. "N-n-no, _I'm _sorry. For having you go through all that—I know it was horrible—"

"Don't apologize on his behalf," he interrupted. "He's the devil himself."

moment of being the only two with their heads down in a large gathering passed between them.

"Well then, let's leave the past where it belongs and enjoy the damn party," she said, her torso swiveling backwards to the drinks, snake fang necklace following her

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><p><strong>And here ends the story. Well that was a crappy resolution, lol. I feel like there could have been an alternative ending but I couldn't think of any at the moment as I was writing. In any case, that's it guys! <strong>

**Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it throughout the entire thing—please leave a review!**

**thir13enth**


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